ELA Grades 11-12 Quarter 4 (Spring) American Literature Curriculum Bundle

Set your students up for success with this nearly zero prep, print and Google slides ready curriculum resource for Quarter 4 (Spring) of your American Literature course. In this resource you will find 4 different units that span 9 weeks of instruction:

• The Southern Gothic
• The Crucible
• 20th Century American Rhetoric
• Contemporary and Diverse Short Stories

Take a look at my FREE Q4 Roadmap for a more in-depth look at these units.

This curriculum bundle includes a wealth of print-ready resources, in-depth answer keys and teaching guides to each text. Note: since all of these stories are under copyright (with the exception of the presidential speeches in the 20th Century American Rhetoric unit), you will have to provide your own story texts. The approach to instruction is standards based, and the lessons are designed to help students analyze what each of these texts communicates about evolving American values.

Activities include:

• Pre-reading journals
• Rhetorical device worksheets
• Embedded questions within rhetorical texts
• Comprehension questions
• Lecture notes
• Essay and group discussion prompts (with rubrics!)
• Quotation task cards
• Character, figurative language and theme charts
• Multiple choice assessments
• Vocabulary charts for each short story
• and more!

Thorough answer keys and rubrics make you the expert in each of the following units.

In Unit 1, The Southern Gothic, your students will:

• Examine the qualities of Flannery O'Connor and Joyce Carol Oates writing that defined the Southern Gothic genre.
• From "Good Country People" and "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" to "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" students will be engaged from day one of the quarter with these challenging and discussion worthy classics.
• Activities for "A Good Man is Hard to Find" are included in this bundle for free, so you can change up which stories you choose to teach!
• As the year comes to a close your students will refine their proficiency in every 11-12.RL standard through close study of stories they will enjoy.

In Unit 2, The Crucible, your students will:

• Take the driver's seat as your class studies Arthur Miller's classic play.
• Lecture notes and comprehension worksheets support students who need direct instruction while quotation task cards and TQE activities allow you to flip the classroom and allow your students to teach each other all of the major concepts of The Crucible.
• By the end of this unit, your students will have made inferences, tracked themes, discussed symbolism, explored the setting, and begun to consider the allegorical implications presented in the play.

In Unit 3, 20th Century American Rhetoric, your students will:

• Demonstrate their proficiency on 11-12.RI standards one final time for the year.
• After brushing up on a variety of rhetorical terms and devices, students will critique Senator McCarthy's "Enemies from Within" speech. This rhetorical analysis bridges the gap between literature and rhetoric as the callbacks to The Crucible couldn't be more obvious.
• Then students will look at JFK's Inaugural Address and LBJ's "We Shall Overcome" speech on the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Not only are both speeches wonderful examples of the power of rhetoric, but also both serve as counterarguments to McCarthy's cynicism.
• Time permitting, students will also analyze Reagan's "Address on the Explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger." This speech ties back to the pioneer spirit on which America was founded, and is engaging way to find meaning in tragedy.

In Unit 4, Contemporary and Diverse Short Stories, your students will:

• Read four short stories: "Indian Education" by Sherman Alexie, "Lullaby" by Leslie Marmon Silko, "The Lesson" by Toni Cade Bambara, and "Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri.
• Each author presents a perspective that your students have not encountered in the curriculum until this point.
• Go beyond the standards and allow your students to examine the social and cultural commentary of some of the best short stories of the last 50 years.

This curriculum bundle covers at least 9 weeks of lessons and possibly more depending on your students' skill levels. Craft the foundation for understanding American literary heritage with this curriculum resource today!

This bundle follows sequentially from my ELA Quarter 3 American Literature Curriculum Grades 11-12 Bundle.

Cover image: Flag of the United States of American, backlit, windy day by jnn13 licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported